


Cause for Violence

by ravenclawkohai



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: M/M, Puppet Cloud Strife
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:58:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9474686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenclawkohai/pseuds/ravenclawkohai
Summary: prompt: Something about you makes me want to commit extreme violencePuppet!Cloud Sefikura





	

               Cloud’s days had long since settled. There was familiarity in the repetition now, comfort in following orders, in following. He had tried leading with AVALANCHE, had tried and failed fantastically, he knew that now. But following—that, he could do and do well. Every day became easier, the knot of worry that came with making decisions for himself and others came looser and looser as time passed. Some part of him, deep, deep in the back of his mind and heart screamed that following blindly, following _Sephiroth_ blindly was the worst idea he’d ever had. That this would end poorly for everyone, from him, to AVALANCHE, to the whole damn world, if he let it carry on. But that voice was easily silenced—he didn’t even need of Sephiroth familiar, smothering presence in his mind. No, this—this he could handle.

He had tried to fight, and it had failed. They had fought to the last man, and it wasn’t enough. Cloud, bleeding from a dozen different wounds, barely able to lift his sword, had been the last on conscious, the rest knocked out at their feet. Sephiroth, for all the fighting, the drawn out struggle, looked immaculate. Not a hair was out of place, no sweat dripped from his brow. Though he, too, bled from wound after wound (the only sign that maybe this man wasn’t the god he claimed to be), the closed swiftly. It came down to the two of them, their enhancements pulling the fight out longer than it had to be, Cloud’s own stubbornness largely at fault. They were wounded, they bled, their wounds stitched themselves shut. Their speed gave the fight a harried pace that Cloud was now struggling to keep up. Their blows hit harder, would have shattered lesser swords so very long ago.

Cloud knew he was fighting a losing fight. It wasn’t a matter of taking the enemy down with him at this point, no, it was a matter of pride, to give as good as he got for as long as he could. He would lose. Sephiroth would win. Meteor, hanging so closely in the sky, would fall and the world would burn to ash. But at least he could enter the Lifestream, for as long as it would last, knowing that he had done all he could.

It was what he had sworn when the last of his comrades fell.

It was what he had sworn, but it was beginning to look uncertain as Sephiroth speared him straight through the abdomen. Cloud felt the wound double time, in the present and the echo of this scenario so long ago. He remembered being lifted on the sword as he writhed and being flung aside, like blood flicked from the sword’s edge. He remembered, but it didn’t happen again. Sephiroth pinned him to the cliff face, and though his hand still held his sword, they both knew there was nothing else to be done at this point.

Sephiroth’s hand left his hilt in a lingering touch as he strode toward Cloud in what felt like an eternity, each movement and crunch of gravel under foot amplified, drawn out to a breaking point. Cloud was hunched over the blade, his toes just barely allowing him to stand, though he was quickly straightened. Sephiroth took a gentle hold of his chin and lifted it, made their eyes meet, and pinned Cloud as thoroughly with his gaze has he had with his sword. His thumb ghosted over his jaw in a slight, almost fond gesture. His hands pressed to his wound, dancing on the tips of his toes for balance, he met Sephiroth’s gaze and found himself falling apart, piece by piece.

He said he would give as good as he got for as long as he could. Well, this was the end of the line. He had neglected to consider what would happen after. He had assumed that Sephiroth would gut him, maybe gloat a little, and then leave him for dead. This—this he did not expected, did not know how to respond to. The fight slipped out of him in measures, bit by bit, until he was drained of it, couldn’t even find where that fire had come from in the first place.

“What?” he asked. He knew that there should be that fire in it. He should have spit it in Sephiroth’s face. Demand to know what he was doing, dare him to finish the deed, maybe mock him in a last spiteful gesture. He just couldn’t find it in him.

“Are you done now?” Sephiroth asked. As if Cloud had started this fight. As if he was the one being unreasonable.

It shocked a laugh out of him, though it was a gurgling, broken thing. He couldn’t find the fire, but he found a ghost of it, a knee-jerk bite of sarcasm, a muscle memory learned over years as a spitfire.

“I should be asking you that.”

The smile that graced Sephiroth’s face was fond, indulgent. As if Cloud was a child that was acting out, Sephiroth the doting adult who knew that such childishness would pass. It sat sour in his stomach. But Masamune sat worse, and that bubble of spite burst before it had really begun to form.

“I have no desire to hurt you, Cloud, I never have,” he said lightly, lifting Cloud’s chin further as he shocked another laugh out of the blond.

He aimed for sarcasm, but only hit weariness. “So, what, you’ve only been fighting us because we started it? Because we dared to oppose you?”

“That’s right,” Sephiroth said, and Cloud wasn’t sure if he felt shock, anger, bitterness, or simply tired. “I’ve done all I could to reach out to you, Cloud, and you’ve rebuffed me at every turn. I called, and I know you heard, but you refused to listen.”

Cloud knew the exact call Sephiroth spoke of. The inappropriate longing, the tug on the edges of his consciousness, the white noise ring in his ears as Sephiroth reached out to him in a way he couldn’t with the others, the blinding shock of pain that forced him to his knees, time and again, when Sephiroth called too loudly.

“What now, then?” he asked. The smallest smile tugged at the corner of Sephiroth’s lips.

“Now, we finish it,” he said, voice light as a feather. “You answer my call, finally come with me and stop this pointless fight, or you do as you’ve always done, and I leave you to die, I finish your friends in front of you so no one will come to your rescue, and continue on unopposed.”

“Wow, you really give stellar options, don’t you,” Cloud said, almost whispered in his tiredness, the same knee-jerk sarcasm keeping him from any smart response.

“You haven’t given me any other options yourself, Cloud,” Sephiroth said, thumb stroking gently over his chin. “Either I will have you as an ally, or erase the last of my enemies. This game of cat and mouse has gone on for quite long enough.”

Cloud’s mind felt muddy, running in slow motion. Finally, he pulled Sephiroth’s hand from his chin, though he left it held high.

There really only was one option.

“If I come with you, you’ll let the others live?” Cloud asked, fingers tightened around Sephiroth’s wrist, fingers taut with pain.

“I will,” Sephiroth said. “Without you, they will be little more than a nuisance.”

Cloud held his gaze, searching for a hint of lie. He could find none. Sephiroth raised an eyebrow in question.

“Fine,” Cloud said, letting Sephiroth’s hand drop. “Get me off your sword and let’s get out of here before they wake up.”

“I knew you’d make the right choice,” Sephiroth said, smug, as he walked back to the hilt of Masamune. With one sharp tug and a groan, Cloud slumped to his knees, hands pressed tightly to the wound. Sephiroth came forward and knelt beside him in the dirt. He reached out and slid a Cure materia from Cloud’s own bracer, slipping it easily into his hilt. It took a few casts, but Cloud was whole soon enough.

He knew he should go back on his word. He should dive for his sword and use this last chance to drag Sephiroth down with him. He felt fine, he felt great even, but even that last knee jerk ghost of fire had left him. As Sephiroth lifted his hand and slotted the materia back into his bracer, Cloud realized a hard truth.

He was tired of fighting.

He was tired of fighting, of struggling, of _leading_. This became painfully clear to him the longer he stayed with Sephiroth. The first few days passed beyond slowly. They travelled little and spoke even less. The first week was wretched. The second week—the second week came easier. Cloud found the routine easy to slip into, it was so similar to his time in the military, even to his time in AVALANCHE. They woke with the dawn. They travelled as far as they could in that day, be it by foot, chocobos, or scavenged vehicle. They rested that night and repeated the process the next day. Cloud adamantly refused to offer Sephiroth any assistance, other than holding his own against local monsters. He was a burden, making Sephiroth pitch their tents, prepare their food, find money and pay for necessities on his own. It was the only thing he could think of to ease his conscience. His friends were still out there, could stop Sephiroth—he had bought them that time. He wasn’t helping AVALANCHE anymore, but he wasn’t helping Sephiroth either.

But this was a slippery slope he walked. It started with following Sephiroth’s lead in only the necessities. When to rise, when to eat, when to sleep. But following had always been easier for Cloud than leading. The list of things he followed Sephiroth in became longer. When to fight. When to talk.

Talking was as slippery a slope as following, if not worse. Sephiroth’s monologues and taunting jabs had been fanatical, vicious, crazed. But discussions on what to eat, where to stay, those came easily.

Sephiroth ceased seeming like a monster, by bits and measures. He had favorite foods. He had trouble sleeping. He paced. He hated washing up in rivers and lakes. The pristine presentation of his hair was a labor of love, not a divine birthright. He started to seem human, and with humanity, came reasonableness. Cloud felt more and more inclined to stop being a burden. Sephiroth was only human, as much as he denied it, and as Cloud had thrown in his lot with him, it was the least he could do to pull his own weight.

The true danger of switching to Sephiroth’s side was in the way he became reasonable. Long gone were the dramatic speeches, taunting laughs, all-knowing mocking. He spoke rationally, relying heavily on facts and logic. He was a spectacular orator, speaking passionately at times, with a charisma, an air about him that drew Cloud in like gravity. When Cloud asked why he had never given speeches for Shinra, Sephiroth had _laughed_ —genuinely, from the heart. He said that he had resolved as a child to never give Shinra more than the minimum, and besides, he had come into this particular gift more late. He refused to specify if that meant before or after he had joined Jenova.

He began to trust Sephiroth. To rely on him to have his back in a fight, to be honest with him, to not mock him, to not speak down to him as if he were a child as he had done in the past. As he began to trust Sephiroth with the small things, that trust spread like a virus. As time passed, he came to trust Sephiroth to lead them. To be reasonable in his demands, to not lead them astray, to do the right thing.

It was a masterful performance to be sure. Sephiroth began with things he could empathize with; fighting monsters and Shinra, talk of family and home, of being relied upon and the burdens of leadership. It wasn’t long before Cloud was empathizing with far more things, things that he would never have considered before. That Jenova was acting in defense against humans, that humans themselves were the plague on their planet. That fighting (slaughtering) civilians was reasonable because of this.

Cloud stopped leading.

He started to follow.

He came to follow blindly.

Hanging off Sephiroth’s every word and whim became second nature. Following him took over every aspect of their lives. He stopped thinking for himself and found he could finally _breathe_. He had never felt so light, so whole, in his entire life. Finally, _finally_ , he had found his cause. All that crippling self-doubt disappeared. He found something, someone else to live for, to breathe for, to die for.

He found peace.

When Sephiroth first brought him to face AVALANCHE, to fight by his side, Cloud was ecstatic, so happy to finally be of true use. He didn’t consider anything else about the situation, not that he was seeing his friends, that he would fight against the movement he had led. He had changed too completely to see it.

That, naturally, was the first thing AVALANCHE noticed, and they saw it with shock and horror. They saw the pure, mako green of Cloud’s eyes, the cat-slit of his pupil, the way Sephiroth’s words dripped from his tongue as he spoke. How he seemed to anticipate Sephiroth’s every need with precision, never once needing to be called or corrected, the two moving in perfect synch. They fought together seamlessly, a strike from one leading to a parry from the other, the two switching between targets smoothly, fighting almost as if they were the same being.

That Cloud was not their Cloud. Their Cloud had died on that cliff-face, right where Sephiroth had speared him.

When Sephiroth consolidated the two of their tents down to one, Cloud didn’t think to question it. When Sephiroth began to touch him more in the tiniest of ways—a guiding hand on the small of his back, a hand on his shoulder as he leaned into Cloud’s space to point something out, a linger brush of fingers has he passed something to the blond—he didn’t think to question it. When those tiny ways expanded to embraces, to being pulled into Sephiroth’s lap, to being held and coddled like a favored lapdog, he didn’t think to question it. When the embraces expanded to kissing, to touching, to long nights spent awake, in each other’s company, doing much more than touching, he didn’t think to question it.

Instead, he reveled in it.

He followed blindly. That trust that led him to follow had been won through tireless effort, in small misdirections, in gentle persuasion, in appealing to Cloud’s thoughts and needs and feelings. Somehow, when Cloud began to follow, the dynamic turned on its head. Cloud fought endlessly for scraps of Sephiroth’s attention. Sephiroth did not neglect the blond, did not suddenly abandon him. But that endless attention, the focus on the other’s thoughts and needs and feelings had changed. It was now Cloud paying desperate attention to what Sephiroth wanted, always appealing to the whims he noticed, eager to earn favor, attention, affection.

Sephiroth had groomed him and had done it well.

It all paid off in the small things. Sephiroth’s favorite nights, the ones spent in the middle of the countryside, completely alone beneath the stars, needing nothing but each other. When he could pull Cloud into his lap and kiss him breathless, finding the blond always reluctant to pull away even for breath, leaning forward for the last lingering touch of their lips. When Sephiroth’s possessive touches were returned eagerly, when the effort he put in to win his prize had finally paid off.

They earned those nights by picked off members of AVALANCHE slowly, fight by fight, person by person. In the end it came down to the way things had begun: Tifa and Barret, alone against the world.

Tifa and Barret, from what seemed like an endless amount of time fighting side by side, had developed near the same synchronicity that Sephiroth and Cloud had. This last battle was like a dance from the second it had begun, deadly yet smooth, silken in the way that violence flowed between the four. In the end, it ended much as was expected. The pace of the battle had quickened and quickened until Sephiroth and Cloud were mere blurs, fast enough to change the battle itself in a blink. It felt cheap, Barret thought, bleeding out slowly into the dirt, that it had come down to the simple matter of enhancements. The fate of the world decided by the blessing and the curse of Tifa and Barret avoiding the years of testing, prodding, manipulating at Hojo’s hand and under his knife. The man was long dead, but he had left a lasting legacy, allowing him to change Gaia’s fate from beyond the grave. Barret died with a bitter grin at the thought.

Tifa, as Sephiroth had expected, held her hands up when Barret went down, when it was clear the way this would end.

Immediately, she turned her gaze to Cloud, pleading, “Cloud, please, it’s me—it’s Tifa. You know me, you remember me from Nibelheim all those years ago, remember the promise you made me?”

And, strangely enough, Cloud froze in step, brows pulled together in confusion. He had pulled his blow, stayed in place for long enough that Sephiroth pulled his own blow as well to watch the exchange, his eyes narrowed.

A small smile formed on Tifa’s face, a flicker of hope in her eyes.

“That’s it,” she said. When she saw his eyes flicker to blue, for just a moment, she insisted, “That’s it! Yes, that’s right, I’m your friend, remember? You said you’d always rescue me when I was in trouble, right?”

Sephiroth lifted his blade and stuck it in the dirt, leaving it stranded, standing just shy of vertical in the ground. He came behind Cloud, hands resting on his shoulders.

“Cloud, no promise you made her matters. She stands against you—against _us_. You won’t abide that, will you?” Sephiroth whispered into his ear, voice smooth as silk.

“I—” was all Cloud could get out as his eyes flickered to blue a second time. A tremble set into his bones.

It was to be expected. Sephiroth always knew this would be the hardest task for him.

“Cloud, she’s the enemy,” Sephiroth urged, sliding his hands down Cloud’s quivering arms until he wrapped his hands around Cloud’s on the Buster Sword’s hilt. “She’s trying to use your words, a promise you made as a _child_ , against you. It’s a cheap, dirty trick to pull on your heartstrings this way. She’s manipulating you.”

And suddenly, everything was clear again. Cloud’s eyes settled comfortably in mako green. It only to the lightest urging from Sephiroth for him to pull the blade back and slam it home.

If his eyes welled with tears, if the last clear-minded part of him died with Tifa on the end of that sword, there was no one left to miss them.

Cloud stuck his sword into the ground, mirroring Sephiroth’s, though Tifa was still pinned on the end of the Buster Sword, eyes slowly going glassy. He turned in the comforting circle of Sephiroth’s arms, and when he looked up at him, he looked lost, for the first time in a long time.

“Why is it that everything always ends in blood?” he asked, sounding hopelessly younger than his years.

Sephiroth hummed, reaching one hand up to cup the side of Cloud’s face, the blond leaning instinctively into the touch.

“Something about you makes me want to commit extreme violence,” Sephiroth said. “It’s how you know I’ll do anything I have to in order to keep you.”

The lost look in Cloud’s eyes cleared like the sky after a storm. A smile bloomed on his lips, reaching up to hold Sephiroth’s hand to his face, turning to kiss his palm, not noticing that his lips came away bloody.

“As if I would ever leave you,” Cloud said simply, as if it were an unspoken truth, something written in the lines of the earth, an immutable fact.

An answer smile grew on Sephiroth’s face.

“No, I suppose you won’t.”

After all, there was no one left to take him away.


End file.
